The Life and Times of Will Graham
by INFJ
Summary: Chapters of Will Graham's life told from a first-person perspective. A fanon backstory exhibiting glimpses of his childhood, adolescence, and ascension into adulthood.
1. New Orleans: Rosanna

_All I wanna do when I wake up in the morning is see your eyes,  
Rosanna, Rosanna.  
I never thought that a girl like you could ever care for me,  
Rosanna._

 _All I wanna do in the middle of the evening is hold you tight,  
Rosanna, Rosanna.  
I didn't know you were looking for more than I could ever be—_

In 1982 Toto was top-chart for five consecutive weeks, only losing out to "Don't You Want Me" and "Eye of the Tiger". I was seven years old at the time and that song played on the radio all hours of the day. I only know that because the babysitter I had was in love with it. I remember she would sing the lyrics word-for-word, take me by the hands, and we'd shimmy to it together in her living room. Shelby McIntyre used to call me a little rockstar. I really liked her.

I went to Shelby's house after school almost every day. My dad worked a lot, and he didn't like the idea of leaving me home alone. He found Shelby on a bulletin board in some pizzeria, called her up, had an interview, and made arrangements for us. On her end she was getting a pretty good deal; six dollars an hour for her trouble. I never was much trouble. Most of the time, we'd be sitting quietly doing our homework. She never got annoyed whenever I asked her for help on any math problems. If she did, she never showed it. Shelby was nice that way.

I remember Shelby had big blond hair and pretty brown eyes. Her hair was usually tied up and I never saw her without massive hoop earrings. She always smelled of fruit and hairspray. I asked her how old she was once and she said, " _Hey, didn't your mama ever tell you it's not nice to ask a lady her age?_ " she was joking of course, but when I told her I didn't have a mama, she got quiet. Then she knelt in front of me and sadly said, " _I'm sorry, Willie._ " she told me she was seventeen. A whole whopping decade older. Apparently my dad neglected to mention my motherless-ness to her (for good reason though, I later learned).

Once Shelby had friends over while she was watching me. Her friends, dressed in similar fashions, came clamoring into her house—gabbing like teenage girls do. They all stopped dead in their tracks when they saw me sitting at the foot of one of the couches, doing my spelling homework.

"Oh, don't worry about him," Shelby said quickly to her friends, "He won't be a nuisance."

One of the girls quipped that she needed a toke and made a fuss that she couldn't, "not wit a little cumstain in here."

" _Jackie!_ " Shelby hissed. It was alright; I was too young yet to understand teenage lingo. Jackie's vocabulary was lost on me. Shelby turned to me, "You didn't hear that, Willie," then to Jackie, "You can't light up in here anyway! It'll smell, and my parents'll hand my backside to me! If you gotta do it, for Pete's sake, go outside."

"Why can't your folks be as chilled out as mine? They don't care if I smoke."

" _My parents aren't stoners, Jackie_."

" _Fh._ Whutevah."

Shelby sighed, dropping her arms, before gesturing toward the kitchen. "Y'all can help yourselves to some juice if you want."

"No beer?"

" _Juice_ ," she repeated firmly. Shelby's friends disappeared from the room, and my sitter drew close to me. "I'm sorry about that, Willie. My friends can be jerks sometimes."

"Why are you friends with them then?" I asked. It was an innocent enough question, but it seemed to set Shelby back on her heels.

"...I don't know," she finally answered, "I guess I just got in with the wrong crowd and I'm having trouble finding my way back out."

I didn't know what to say to that, but Shelby pressed a kiss to my forehead. "You're real sweet, Willie, you know that? ...We're supposed to be working on a school project together. Here, why don't you stay in my room, that way we don't disturb you?"

She brought me up to her room, a small but lively space. The walls were peach, and lined with crooked posters of various boy bands I didn't know or care for. There was a cork board on one wall, pinned with various things like phone numbers and memos. Her one dresser had a large mirror on it, adorned with all kinds of jewelry and feathery trinkets. I saw soccer trophies on a different dresser. She asked me to pardon the mess, asked me if I wanted anything to eat or drink, and then left me to my own devices. I knew better than to go snooping, but I did take my time scoping everything that was readily visible to me. One of the photographs I saw was a picture of her parents. I never got to meet them; Shelby's dad worked late hours and her mom was barely ever home, what with business trips constantly stealing her off. Shelby's dad was a tax accountant, her mom was a business representative for Conair.

After I satiated my curiosity enough, I resumed my homework. About a half-hour after it got dark out, a funky smell reached my nose. I wasn't sure what it was at first, but then I reasoned that a skunk had cut one outside. The window was open, so I closed it. Some ten minutes later, I heard a muffled, "What the _fuck?!_ "

It was my dad's voice. Startled, I went back to the window and cracked it open. I heard a quick scream—Jackie.

"Oh no you don't, you little-!" My dad was pounding on the front door with his fist. I saw Jackie struggling to escape my dad's grip on her arm. She managed to finally wrench herself away, and she booked it, long, dark legs flying her down the street and out of sight. My dad spun back on her with a shout, but she was long gone. He turned back to the door and jarred it open. I pulled my head back inside and listened to a great racket downstairs. I heard some screaming and my dad breaking Hell on their backs. I heard him using Shelby's phone to call the police. Then he came upstairs for me.

The door opened, and I saw my dad, red in the face.

" _Get your shit together and wait in the car._ "

I didn't dare ask questions. I scrambled to pack my bag and scurried down the steps ahead of him. I was out the door but dad hadn't followed me out. My foot kicked the blunt that Jackie had tried to stamp out under her heel. I sat in the car for almost ten minutes before the police arrived. Red and blue lights flickered and flashed all around me out in the street, and I ducked my head as two officers in blue strode past me on the sidewalk. I watched them knock on Shelby's front door, and even though I didn't fully understand what was going on, I could only think about how much trouble she was in. I knew long before my dad would say the words that I wasn't ever going to see Shelby McIntyre again.

Another ten minutes later, my dad finally emerged from the house. I dreaded each footstep that brought him closer to our car, even though I was pretty sure I myself wasn't in any trouble. He opened the driver's door, climbed in, and keyed the ignition. Neither of us said a word.

Five minutes into the drive, he switched on the radio.

" _Not quite a year since she went away-_ "

My dad punched the off button so hard that it cracked. I watched, rigid in my seat, as he shook off his hand, clenched a fist, and clamped it hard back on the wheel.

" _Billy, I swear to god if you ever touch a blunt, I'll fucking kill you._ "

That was when I knew, beyond a shadow of doubt, that the monster ate up my dad and took his place.


	2. Lake Erie: Admission of the Son

**I wrote this last year, and only now saw fit to finally publish it for more eyes to see. Since Will Graham's canon backstory is extremely obscure (ergo up for boatloads of interpretation), and since Will has to be my fictional fave of all time, I took it up myself to attempt constructing a fanon backstory that I hope does his character justice.**

 **Be aware that I may/will be updating this story "out of order", but I will rearrange the chapters chronologically to minimize confusion of what happens when.**

 **Happy Reading~ Critiques and comments are welcome and appreciated.**

My family moved around a lot when I was a kid. We lived in multiple houses over the years, and none of them were remarkable by any means. Most times they were shanty, run down excuses for dwellings. Shacks. This particular shack was in a trailer park. It was a small, elongated home, though it wasn't raised. It was rooted solidly to the ground. One room on the far end of the house was collapsed and completely rotted—a loose bull from a nearby farm had charged our house long before we took up residence in it. We got the house at a discounted price. Discounts lured my father like honey drew bears. Of the surviving rooms, there was a tiny kitchen, living room, a "master" bedroom, a bathroom smaller than an office cubicle, a front entranceway-slash-"laundry room" even smaller than that leading into the kitchen, and a spare room that was made to be my bedroom. I didn't get the luxury of a bedroom door. I had to make do with a shower curtain that my father went out and bought to fix to the doorframe. At least I got to pick the color.

I learned that up north, the kids at school are less kind toward kids who are "trailer trash". That's what they called us poor whites who lived in those run-down communities. Evidently the contempt left over from the Civil War still ran like bitter tree sap even in Northern veins. Because of that alone, my choice in friends was limited to those of kin—kids who were "trashy" like I was. I avoided the particular ones who brandished any kind of Confederate paraphernalia in the name of "good old Southern civic pride". That narrowed my selection even further. Not that it really mattered in the end. Any friends that I would make here I was bound to leave behind. And I wasn't really allowed to have much leisure time to spend with friends to begin with. My dad saw to that.

I passed our days up at Lake Erie productively. When I wasn't in school learning, I was either helping my dad out in the boatyards, or hiring myself out to anyone who needed a handyman. Or a babysitter. I didn't draw too much income that way, but it was something. I learned early on that I had to work for everything I wanted. From time to time my dad would slip me a ten or a twenty, but that ten or twenty never was unearned in some way. Unconditional "allowances" were inconceivable in our household. Any cash from my dad would come to me completely unscheduled. The "just because"-ness of his monetary gifting made it seem thoughtful, and it was. But I still had to bust my ass for every penny. My dad even more so.

The smell of alcohol was not unfamiliar in the Graham household. I understood how hard my dad worked to support us, so the commonplace drinking was justifiable in my mind. Many times I came in to find my dad passed out on a dingy couch, unfinished bottle loosely clutched in his fingers. Sometimes the bottle was on the floor, spilled.

I knew the routine. Whenever I found my dad unconscious, the first thing I did–after checking his respiration and pulse–was turn him on his side, in case he wound up vomiting. There were moments when I'd think about leaving him be, on his back. I thought maybe he would choke and die. I wanted that sometimes. But I always knew better and I turned him over. If I didn't, he would wake up and get angry at me for failing to do so. And anyway, such abhorrent ideas always wound up making me feel sick to my stomach. The guilt would almost always bully me to tears. My dad may not have been Father of the Year, but he was doing the best that he could do.

The second thing I did was clean up any spills of beer, whiskey, or whatever other poisons my dad had in our pantry. Alcohol was a precious resource in our house, and for him to discover that he unwittingly wasted it, he would rupture. And who else would bear the brunt of his aggression but me?

The third thing I did was to make sure that all walkways were obstruction-free and that all drawers, cabinets, and the like were closed. My dad was pretty irritable about that.

The fourth and final thing was that I always made sure to have a water glass, an Alka-Seltzer, and a bucket ready at his side when he woke.

My dad was a heavy man at six feet. (At fourteen I still hadn't yet noticed any exponential change in my height and I feared that I'd be short for my entire life.) That evening he was dead weight on that couch. When I tried to roll him over, he didn't budge too easily. I got more aggressive in trying to turn him over, only to have him to slur, " _Fuck off._ " I took my hands back in a flash.

"...Dad, it's me. Billy." He rarely called me "Will", never called me "William"; it was always "Billy".  
" _Billy-_ "  
"Yes sir."  
" _Whaddya doin', kid-_ "  
"Makin' sure you aren't dead."  
A heavy, toxic chuckle. " _Tha'sa boy._ "

I thought that was a hybridization of, "Atta boy," and "That's my boy." I smiled widely, trying not to laugh.

"You gotta turn over, Dad," I said, taking his shoulder. Grunting, he complied, turning onto his side before letting his weight sink back into the cushions.  
" _Ya good kid, Billy... Takin' care of y'old man..._ "  
"You want a blanket or something?"  
" _Nuh, 'm good..._ "

I sat beside my dad for a few minutes out of dutiful obligation. I'd never had to call an ambulance for alcohol poisoning before, my dad always wound up being fine, but it could always happen. I was quiet on my foot stool (I didn't want to grab a chair from the kitchen and risk making a racket– that would've started a throwdown). I decided to work on some homework, but I found myself too absent from the task at hand to get much done. I watched my dad, watched the rise and fall of his chest. I felt my chest compress. There were words emerging from the depths that wanted to brim over, but I wasn't sure I was ready to tell my dad yet. I had been thinking about it for a long while, but I never had the guts to come out with it. I was always afraid of my dad's ridicule. I was deathly afraid of having him laugh at or mock me. But when I thought about it some more, a part of me argued that divulging my "secret" was not giving him ammunition to gun me down. And he was inebriated right now. Maybe the alcohol would soften the blow of my words. Or his. Maybe he wasn't even conscious.

Head ducked like a penitent man, I exhaled the words.

"I want to join the police force, Dad."

" _Huhn?_ "

I nearly jumped out of my skin.

" _Speak up, boy, can't hear you..._ "

My heart was frantically looking for an eject button. I sucked in a breath and repeated myself as calmly–and firmly–as I could.

"I want to join the police force." I winced. My voice cracked. Damn the throes of adolescence. Damn them straight to Hell.

" _S'good money'n that..._ ," my dad answered after a long silence. I took that as a sign of approval. So far so good.

"Yeah," tragically, was the only reply I could give.

" _Y'dont have th'hair on yer balls for it._ "

My heart dropped. My skin was slowly chameleon-ing as my dad drawled out a drunken thesis explaining why I wouldn't make it as a cop, only it wasn't blending me into my surroundings. At the vague conclusion, I was grilled and seasoned. My dad turned himself back, away from me. After a pause, the only thing I could think to say was, "I will."

Then, "I'll do it. I'm gonna go to school, get an education, train, and I'll make enough money for the both of us. You'll never have to work again." His rejoinder was,

" _Damn pipe dream, s'all it is._ "

I didn't know how to respond. And even if I did, getting smart with my drunk father would only end badly. I said no more, got up, and left.

I abandoned the trailer-shack we called a home and stumbled out into the forest of towering pines that walled the trailer park from the farm. The late afternoon sun cast wedges of orange-gold glow between trunks far older than me. I didn't venture too far from the house. I found a place to sit on the floor of dead needles and pine cones, leaned back against a sturdy tree. I forced a breath through my stinging nose and blinked my eyes, looking up into the deep verdant canopy overhead. I rubbed my threatened eyes for good measure and sighed.

I "had too much heart," he'd said time and time again.

Translated to Old Drunk, that meant, " _You're too damn sensitive_."

In the Papa Graham vernacular, " _You're a fuckin' pussy._ "

My head dropped into my arms and eager contestants raced down my cheeks.


	3. Lake Erie: Hill-Billy

I dealt with my share of bullying over the years of my primary education. Normally I wasn't the type of person to go looking for trouble (quite the opposite actually; I cowered from any chance of physical conflict—and surrendered a lot of lunch money and answers for homework that way), but it wasn't until high school that I got into my first fight. I think my father's drunken dismissal of my chosen career path primed me for that brawl.

Something itched and scratched in me to prove that I wasn't a "pussy", that I could hold my own. So when Arnold "Sluggernaut" Thatcher antagonized me in the schoolyard after hours, it was for the last time.

I quietly entered our house, cringing as that ratty screen door squeaked. I'd been meaning to give it a bit of lube, but I'd kept putting it off. I also cringed because I could feel a black eye coming on, and there was no way I'd be able to hide that from my dad. My bedroom was right there next to the entranceway, so I didn't have to parade my injuries through our tiny house to hide away. I realized that I had no need to be careful about the squeaky door; my dad wasn't home from work yet. After dropping my backpack on my bed, I slipped into the bathroom to examine and clean myself up. But first I went to the answering machine on our kitchen counter and erased the most recent message: a notice from my principal that I had gotten into a fight with another student, and he would like for the parents of both students to see him in his office—with their children. I didn't have to listen to the message to know what it said. I was there when he made the calls.

My heart palpitated in my chest again. Jesus, I'd gotten myself bloodied up and now I was going to suffer the consequences. I knew that I was going to regret it later, but landing my first punch was just _so liberating—_

I dabbed at my hairline with peroxide-dipped cotton. It stung like hell, but I'd rather not have risked infection. I'd be able to cover that cut easily. I swept down my hair, let my curls do the work. Most of the blood on my face came from my nose, when Sluggernaut head-butted me. I touched my nose tenderly—was it broken? (It wasn't— I later found out it was fractured.) I'd cleaned most of that up at school. I went back to my backpack. I'd been smart enough to stop at a drugstore on the way home and pick up some cheap coverup.

Yes, I resorted to wearing makeup. It gave me some grief at school after the fact, but most of my peers respected me for standing up to Slugger. That fight turned me into an advocate for the average nerd. I "spoke for" the tired, weaker masses, the victims of socialized abuse and neglect. I suddenly had a lot of friends at school. But I obtained plenty of enemies for myself too. It wasn't until one thin boy said, "Why're you covering that [bruising] up? You _fought Slugger_. Wear your stripes proudly, man," that I stopped bothering with coverup in my morning routine.

But at the moment, I wanted nothing more than to hide my injuries as much as physically possible. Which dismayed me, because when looking in the mirror, I saw that the swelling had increased around my eye since I left the school grounds.

Made that much worse when my dad suddenly called the house.

" _Hey, Billy, I need you out on the docks pronto._ "

Before I could half-lie about feeling too sick to work, he'd hung up on me.

Great.

I changed my clothes, laid it on thick with the coverup, said a little prayer, and left for the docks.

I knew it'd be vain.

I managed to hide the black eye for about three seconds.

"What's-a matter?"  
"Huh?"  
"Why're you looking at me funny like that?"  
"Like what?"  
"Turn your head."  
"Dad-"  
"Billy, I said turn your head, _now._ "

As though the words were salt on the wounds, I winced. Defeated, I slowly turned to face him completely. I'd never seen my dad look so shocked in my life.

"What the _hell happened to you?_ " he demanded.

I almost said, "Nothing," on impulse, but that would've copped me a world of shit for lying flat-out to his face.

"Got in a fight."  
"A _fight?_ "  
"Yeah, at school. ...Principal Lewis is expecting us."  
"God damn it, Billy, what the hell's gotten into you?!" I braced myself for the worst to come. "Who started it?"

The question, unexpected, stopped me as I started to prop a defense statement.

"–What?"  
"Who _started_ the fight?"  
"You mean who threw the first punch, or-"  
"Don't you get smart with me-"

I wasn't. I swallowed a knot in my throat. "...I did. I hit him first."

" _Shit._ "

I cringed. At least on the inside I did.

"Well, that's not what the prince is gonna hear, alright?" My dad was drilling into me with his eyes. " _He hit you first._ You understand me?"

I did. "Yes sir."

My dad reached up and began to gingerly touch my face. He was smudging away the coverup. I did my best to ignore how much it hurt.

"Tell me about this prick who roughed you up," he said while examining me.  
"Tall," I started, "big, but muscly, a _total jackass-_ "  
My dad cracked a grin, then tried to thin his lips together; he wasn't supposed to be laughing about this. It was okay though. I found it funny too.  
"Packing on the lard, was he?"  
"Packing? Dude was an express carrier." I felt absolutely rotten for saying that, but I'd sooner kick Slugger under a bus than have my dad do the same to me. I landed my dad; he burst out laughing and clapped my shoulder. He was proud of me. I had mixed feelings about that. I didn't let on about it though. I cherished the moment with him.

Of course my dad saw that I had, indeed, exaggerated about Arnie's weight. All in good fun though. That was man-primping before the "parent-teacher conference". I did exactly what my dad told me to do. I lied, claiming that Slugger had shoved me up against a chain-link fence. I did a damn good job lying about it too, directing Principal Lewis so kindly to the cut at my hairline. Said it was from scratching the edge of the link.

Then the icing on the cake.

This part was actually true, but as far as my dad was concerned, it was just a topper on my lie. I didn't have any trouble hesitating to come out with it. The raw feelings I expressed at that moment—those were real. Those tears were real. Though now looking back on it, I can't say for sure what coaxed them.

"I just got fed up with it," I said in closing, "I took it as long as I could. But getting called "Hill-Billy"—it gets _real old_ after a while."

I got suspended for a week. Slugger got suspended. Then expelled.

I went to bed that night but I didn't sleep.

All I could think about was how simultaneously glad and horrified I was.

Had it not had the potential to jeopardize my future career in criminal justice, I would've left my antagonizer with a permanent reminder that I was not to be trifled with.

I wouldn't have thought twice about biting off Arnold Thatcher's ear.


	4. Lake Erie: Ice-Fishing

As a born Southerner, deciduous climates and I didn't agree the most. Living up by Lake Erie for the short period that I did, I got to experience my first Northern winter. I liked the snow— _until_ I had to shovel my third blanket of it. We didn't have any plows for the occasion, and my dad sure wasn't planning on buying one if we weren't going to be sticking around in the long run. I remember too many days where I was woken up at ungodly hours to help clear the walkway and driveway before having to get ready for school. Once while out shoveling I heard my dad mutter, agitated, " _I've had it with this damned Yankee land._ " It was exactly then that I saw yet another move in our foreseeable future.

One weekend I was roused early from sleep. If I hadn't known better I would've mouthed off because it was Saturday. My dad told me to dress warmly. He hadn't ever said anything like that just to go out shoveling snow.

"What's going on, Dad?" I asked with my _still annoyingly_ pubescent voice.

"We're going fishing," he said, which was pretty obvious because he had a bucket full of gear out on the kitchen table, among other packs and tools too big to fit.

"Ice fishing?"

"You bet," my dad answered and picked up the shortest fishing rod I'd ever seen in my life.

It was twilight when we headed out. I knew that the hours of the early morning were the most ideal for hunting. I hadn't known that to be the case for ice fishing too. Maybe it was just a matter of personal preference. The entire car ride was almost completely silent. I can still smell the coffee my dad kept in his insulated thermos. Black.

I was reasonably wary the whole ride there. My dad had never taken me ice-fishing before. He'd gone out on the Lake a few times to try his luck, but he always left me home. This time he hadn't, and he hadn't even give me a day's notice. Something was wrong.

When we got out on the Lake, it was windy. We were wearing ski masks (which made me feel like we were out looking to pull a bank heist), insulated pants, jackets, had glove warmers stuffed, and wool socks inside our pack boots. It was cold as hell, and the exposed openings about my face seemed to sap the temperature into my skin. Fortunately, my dad had gone out and acquired a small ice shanty for us to take shelter in. But we couldn't set up the shanty until he had our holes. I watched as he took a large black auger and drilled two holes in the ice, one for each of us. (" _Never_ go out on ice less than five inches thick, and _do not ever_ go out on the ice alone," he'd told me back in the truck. "Yes sir," I'd said back.) I realized that the holes would be too far apart for the ice shanty to shield both from the wind; one of us would have to tough it out in the cold. I volunteered to take the outdoor hole, but my dad had me plant my ass inside the shanty. I made a note to myself to offer pulling the sled back to the truck when we wrapped up here.

We stationed ourselves far out on the ice, but not out of sight of fellow fishermen. There were a couple of middle-aged early birds out on the ice with us, total strangers. They didn't pay us too much mind, except one stopped what he was doing to say hello as we walked out to our spot. My dad and I waved back to him. We all kept to ourselves after that. On overturned buckets my dad sat with me inside the shanty for a little while to rig me a rod and give me a basic run-through. It wasn't as if I'd never gone fishing before, so most of what he told me was rudimentary stuff, but I remember he said this:

" _Ice-fishing's a whole different game. See, in the winter the fish aren't as active. Their metabolisms are slowed up to conserve energy and they aren't as hungry for your bait. They aren't inclined to give two shits_ _what_ _you're danglin' in front of 'em. You gotta_ _entice 'em_ _. You gotta provoke the prey, make him forget what he knows and make him act on instinct. That's the name of the game._ "

At the time, I felt like my dad had just upped the stakes when saying that. If I didn't land a fish, I'd be rewarded with fatherly disappointment. When he finally left the shanty to set up his own hole, the space where he sat was newly occupied and I felt much colder, even with the glove warmers hot against my hands.

I waited, hunched over that hole for hours. Every now and then, my dad would give a short shout of, " _How're you makin' out, Billy?_ " and every time I'd painstakingly reply dissatisfactory answers. Occasionally I'd get words of encouragement in response. After a while, I'd only be met with silence.

I knew there was a sledgehammer raised up in the air. I could feel it looming over my shoulders. I anxiously awaited it to come down and crack the ice beneath my feet. Or break my ribs. Maybe my spine. It felt inevitable, and it got to the point where I almost mustered the gut to leave the shanty and question my dad. To just drag it out in the open, raw, for us to hash out.

It never came down.

I did manage to catch a fish that day. When the bobber suddenly sank into the hole and out of sight, I jerked the rod–a simple trick my dad taught me to really sink the hook into the fish so it wouldn't be able to chicken out–pulled up on it and reeled. I hollered for my dad, and he came rushing into the shanty.

"I got one, Dad!"

"You don't got him yet, bring him in!"

Whatever it was that I hooked, it had a lot of muscle. I strained like a trainer against barbells, and I was deathly afraid the line would break. My dad knew what he was doing when he fixed me up though; I hadn't realized that he set me up to catch a nasty slugger from the start. Though upon recollection, it should've been obvious when he put minnows on my hook.

The moment the catch broke water nearly had me rupture with the excitement a child exhibits at Christmas. My dad moved quickly and sank a gaff into its flesh, and that was it; the fish got hauled up into a waiting net and it was over. I was breathing gouts of steam and there was a brief intermission, where my dad and I looked at each other, and I saw how _proud_ he was.

" _You did it, Billy,_ " he said, short on breath despite me doing most of the heavy lifting, " _You just caught your first pike._ "

Satisfied with my catch, the two of us packed up and went home. By then it was mid-morning. The two geezers out on the ice with us congratulated me on my catch and I was positively beaming. Of course, I offered to drag the sled back to dry land like I noted, but my dad refused the offer. I had done well today in my labor. We didn't exercise catch-and-release; that fish came home with us for dinner.

It was the best day I'd had in a long while, and I was so immeasurably glad that I hadn't spoiled the outing with my insinuation. It was all just my imagination after all.

That's what I thought, but I wasn't wrong. The sledgehammer had been there the entire time. My dad just didn't have the heart to let it come down when he'd planned to.

Down the road, I made uncomfortable bedfellows with two words, each of which came in their own time.

The first was "cirrhosis".

The second was "cancer".


	5. Wolf Trap: Mother's Day

Will twisted the stem of a casablanca lily in his fingers and watched the petals swirl like the pleats of a floor-length gown. He was standing alone on a bowed wooden bridge, curled forward on the railing. Human traffic in the early morning was moderately sparse. Most were routine walkers and joggers. A group of chattering old women power-walked by a few minutes ago, discussing the types of frivolous things that upper-middle class retirees could afford to prioritize their utmost concerns. He heard the footfalls of a jogger on a strict exercise regimen. Her briefly close proximity swept through him the ghost of her inner disciplinarian. Seven minutes, thirty-five seconds. Watch your heels. Don't lean in, keep your back straight. Slow, steady breaths. Pick it up, let's go. He watched her take off into the woods, blond ponytail swishing back and forth, knowing this was penance for the previous day's gluttony. A mother pushed a stroller and spoke to her prancing young daughter about twenty yards away. A lone cyclist swished by behind him, but he didn't glance. Just watched the lily twirl in his fingers.  
Behind him, beneath him, before him, Wolftrap Creek prattled.

The atmosphere wasn't very scenic. All around him were scratches of lichened bare trees just starting the annual struggle to squeeze out new leaves. The sky was gloomy and the ground was soggy from recent rainfall. The creek was a rocky trough with a width of no greater than fifteen feet, no deeper than three, swollen, and the embankments were unpleasantly muddy. In the summertime, when the foliage was apexed, the area was a cozy, verdant haven. But for now, it was wanting.  
There were times when Will was glad that he never knew his own mother. Those times were heavily outweighed by the times when he wished that he did. All that he knew about her was secondhand information, passed onto him from his dad. Lillies were her favorite, he'd said, the ones that were bell-shaped. He hadn't known they were called calla lilies, but he said she liked them because they were weird. Different. Special. A whole cluster of them were bunched in his other hand, resting on the lip of the wooden rail. Will chose pink ones from the florist because in his mind, she liked pink ones.

He tucked the casablanca behind his ear, after bringing it to his nose and inhaling.

A firm hand grasped his shoulder.

There beside him stood his father, old, but not old enough. Grayed, but not grayed enough. A dim smile graced his features, then dissipated. His hand slide down off of the of peak of his shoulder, fingers gently splayed over the blade in his back as he drew closer and turned to stand abreast with his son. He was the same few inches shorter, and the familiar, but not missed smell of his aftershave ghosted in the immediate space around them.

Will watched him reach for a lily. Drop it into the creek. He wordlessly followed steady suit. Together they expressed their thoughts silently, slowly depositing the beautiful flowers into the ugly water. One by one, the pink blossoms fell a graceful ten feet, and they watched them get swept away under the bridge and out of sight. Father and son lifted somber, commemorative smiles together. Will clung to the warmth and comfort his father's presence implied, but those wishful thoughts slipped through the mind's fingers, and an ominous fog seeped into the vacant spaces they left behind. The man was long gone from this world, but from beyond the grave he carried with him a message that had gone unspoken for the entirety of their lives together. The double-edgedness of Will's gifts rang sure and true; while he could keep vivid company with others in their absence, he couldn't always will the figments of his imagination to adhere to him. He saw people for who and what they were. These apparitions didn't always immediately present themselves authentically, but when the pieces of their puzzles clicked together-

Will never knew his mother. He was not once able to conceive an animate image in her likeness. He dreamed of her, imagined her, envisioned her with a mother's love and pieced in the chips that his father shared with him, but her portraiture always lacked particular depth. He suspected early on that there were plenty of things about his mother that his father withheld from him, but in his youth he presumed (correctly) that the privacy his surviving parent maintained was constructed from the pain associated with her memory. They didn't broach the subject of wife and mother very often over the years, and for the longest time, Will accepted and made peace with the blatant reality that there was a dimensionality to her that he would never be able to fully perceive.

Will looked.

What he saw was something unfamiliar, unlike anything he had ever seen portrayed on his father's face. The contortion of his features was uncharacteristic, a distortion of the man he always knew. A madness that didn't belong permeated his skin, polluted the air with frightful potency. An alien presence emerged from somewhere unknown, somewhere within the array of plotted points mapped over years of personal experience. Dots connected within the intricate web of his father's profile and it was all too striking for Will to see at once. Facts collided with cacophonous sound and in the tumult, it was impossible to know how he knew but he knew and a new face peered out from the dimensionless plane and it leered not unlovingly.

 _Calla lilies are poisonous._

She was disquieting, like the breath drawn before a scream.


End file.
